The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, June 24, 2016

Faced with the existential threat
Iran poses to the region, the Arabs are realizing that Israel is not
the adversary and that resolving the Palestinian problem is a relatively
minor issue

The Saudi deputy crown
prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is currently in the United States
discussing his country's new economic plan to reduce dependency on oil
while improving its technological and military capabilities. In light of
the worsening tensions between Iran and Gulf states, chief among them
Saudi Arabia, Salman is undoubtedly carrying an urgent message of
distress to the U.S. administration.

For years now Iran has
waged a policy of destabilization and violence, aimed at taking control
of the Saudi Peninsula, instituting Shiite rule over the Islamic holy
sites in Mecca and Medina, dominating the oil market and its
transportation routes in the Persian Gulf, expelling the Americans and
the Saudis and pushing forward -- toward the rest of the world. In this
regard, Iran's relationship with Qatar and Oman is akin to a handler and
his agents. While these two countries supposedly represent the same
interests as other Sunni states, in reality Qatar is funding the Muslim
Brotherhood's efforts to undermine Arab regimes and incite against them
at Iran's behest through Al Jazeera. Oman, for its part, is "selling the
Arabs out" by mediating American-Iranian meetings on its soil.

The final objective of
Iran's slow but steady advance toward domination of the Persian Gulf --
which began years ago -- is Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Saudis,
Egyptians and other Gulf states, who have gathered together under the
Gulf Cooperation Council, feel the Americans have chosen Iranian
hegemony -- as an alternative crisis-management option in the region --
over of the "headache inducing" Sunni Arab states that are torn between
conflicting interests and Islamist terrorist organizations fighting
amongst one another.

Ever since the removal
of Saddam Hussein, who served as a type of "anti-virus" to Iranian
machinations, Iran has increased its "pyromaniacal" activities
throughout the Middle East and even Africa. This activity is
characterized by subversion, destruction and blood. The Iranians are
igniting the flame in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and are waging a terror
campaign in Yemen. They are active in Libya, Egypt and Gaza via
Hezbollah (which helped plan attacks on the Suez Canal in 2008), and
fund Sunni terrorist organizations like Hamas. Due to Sunni factionalism
and foolishness, focusing on Israel as an enemy, the disjointed Arab
states failed to deploy against Iran.

In the meantime, the
Iranians are concentrating their subversion efforts in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrain and UAE, inciting sedition among their respective Shiite
populations. In January 2016, the Saudis arrested 47 terrorists and
hanged their Shiite leader, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In response, the
"Basij" (the ayatollah regime's paramilitary volunteer militia) torched
the Saudi embassies in Mashhad and Tehran. This past week, Bahrain
revoked the citizenship of the country's leading Shiite cleric,
Ayatollah Isa Qassim, who served as an emissary of Iran. In response to
this "crossing of a red line," Iran threatened to launch a regional war.
Iranian General Qassem Soleimani warned Bahrain's Sunni regime that its
"degradation" of citizens (the majority of whom are Shiites) would
ignite a bloody regional conflict. As expected, Hezbollah parroted the
Iranian condemnation while Saudi Arabia declared its support for
Bahrain's legal measures.

Faced with the existential threat
Iran poses to the region, the Arabs are realizing that Israel is not
the adversary and that resolving the Palestinian problem is a relatively
minor issue. In the meantime, the U.S. administration is struggling to
recognize radical Islam as a driving force behind global terrorism. It
also refuses to acknowledge Iran's expansionist and nuclear goals, and
its objectives regarding development of ballistic missiles. The dilemma
is indeed a difficult one, because the Iranian Shiite "virus" and the
"anti-virus" (Sunni Islamic radicalism) are equally dangerous to the
world.

Dr. Reuven BerkoSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16485 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

And with Donald Trump's renewed focus, is the comeuppance of economically illiterate "Crooked Hillary" at hand?

Editor’s note: Credit goes to Dr. Bob Shillman for the title of this article.

Hillary Clinton's bizarre claim that billionaire businessman Donald
Trump will cause a recession if elected to the presidency was
overshadowed yesterday as Trump took deadly aim at the pathological
liar's horrifying public service track record.

For her part, Clinton glibly dismissed Trump.

"As I said yesterday in Ohio, Donald Trump offers no real solutions
for the economic challenges we face," Clinton said in a speech to the
faithful in Raleigh, N.C. "He just continues to spout reckless ideas
that will run up our debt and cause another economic crash."

Around the same time, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for
president, laid into "Crooked Hillary" with a vigor and focus that
Americans haven't seen for a while. Trump's speech, in which he
accurately described Clinton as a "world-class liar," was very well
received and is making left-wing pundits nervous -- for good reason.

Unlike Trump's address, Clinton's speech
was a carefully constructed alternate reality held together by a tissue
of leftist lies. Clinton's oration was an economically illiterate
catalog of hoary Marxist cliches, or as Dr. Bob Shillman quipped, "liar,
liar, pantsuit on fire."

Clinton offered a vague outline of
her disastrous socialistic economic agenda, largely a continuation of
President Obama's anti-growth policies and tainted as it is by a focus
on so-called social justice objectives at the expense of economic growth
and individual rights.

She spoke nonsensically of "growth
that’s strong, fair, and lasting ... that reduces inequality, increases
upward mobility, that reaches into every corner of our country." To keep
her union thugs happy, Clinton vowed to "say no to bad trade deals and
unfair trade practices, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership," and no
to the "assault on the right to organize and bargain collectively."

Ignoring the fact that she served front and center in a radically
left-wing administration that over the last nearly seven and a half
years has presided over the weakest economic recovery since the Great
Depression, Clinton promised "to make this economy work for everybody
... building it from the ground up, from every home and every community,
all the way to Washington."

Leftists like Hillary enjoy
anthropomorphizing inanimate objects and abstract concepts because they
can't win policy arguments on the merits. They prefer fabricating
monsters they can slay.

Guns and gas-guzzling SUVs "kill"
people, they routinely claim as if machines were sentient, volitional
beings. To them the U.S. Constitution is a "living document" that
changes with the times. And like their cousins the Keynesians, they
treat the economy like a circus animal that can be manipulated and
taught tricks, instead of as the product of billions of individual
decisions made every day by producers and consumers.

Clinton
dredged up one of the Left's favorite and most insidious talking points,
declaring "it is way past time for us to guarantee equal pay for
women."

The fanciful claim that women earn less
than men will probably never die because it is essential to the Left's
narrative that America is inherently unfair. Of course comparing men's
wages to women's wages is like comparing apples to oranges. Women pull
in less money because they tend to opt for more humanities and fewer
science and math majors in college. Owing to family and child-rearing
obligations, women as a group also tend not to work the long hours that
men work.

Critiquing President Obama's claim that women earn
just 77 cents for every dollar men earn, the Manhattan Institute's Diana
Furchtgott-Roth wrote in 2013 that the 77-cent figure "is bogus because
it averages all full-time women, no matter what education and
profession, with all full-time men."

"Unmarried childless
women's salaries, however, often exceed men's," she wrote. "In a
comparison of unmarried and childless men and women between the ages of
35 and 43, women earn more: 108 cents on a man's dollar."

The feminist fabulist continued spinning yarns.

"Excessive inequalities such as we have today reduces economic
growth," Clinton said, pretending she likes the market economy. "Markets
work best when all the stakeholders share in the benefits," she said,
paying homage to candidate Obama's mantra that "when you spread the
wealth around, it's good for everybody."

"There are great
ideas out there," Clinton said. "And we are going to be partners in a
big, bold effort to increase economic growth and distribute it more
fairly, to build that economy that works for everyone, not just those at
the top." The "Wall Street corporations and the super rich," also known
as her most ardent supporters, must be made to "pay their fair share of
taxes."

She promised to "make college debt-free for all" and
to "rewrite the rules so more companies share profits with their
employers and few ship profits and jobs overseas."

Clinton
defended the international cash-for-future-presidential-favors trading
platform known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. She
belittled Trump for highlighting the corruption endemic to the
enterprise that is primarily devoted to enriching the Clinton family.

Trump is trying "to distract us" by "attacking a philanthropic
foundation that saves and improves lives around the world," she said
with a straight face. "It's no surprise he doesn't understand these
things."

The Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore dismantled
what he called Clinton's "Twilight Zone" grab bag of proposals. A
related speech Hillary gave the previous day "was vacant of ANY ideas at
all about how to help the economy. The left's idea cupboard is entirely
empty. "

Moore mocked her claim that here "in America we pay
our bills," a reference to what he called "Trump's sensible idea of
refinancing out debt to lock in historically low interest rates." The
Obama administration in which Clinton served has generated some $8
trillion of new debt, which is hardly "paying the bills."

"It's passing them on to the next generation," Moore wrote.

Clinton's claim that Trump doesn't understand the new economy and job
creation, is "a bold claim since Donald Trump is a highly successful
businessman who actually has created thousands of jobs, while Hillary
has gotten rich off of... politics."

Moore continued:

"The class warfare theme ran throughout the speech, and yet this
presents Hillary with another uncomfortable problem. Obama has raised
the minimum wage, he already did spent $830 billion on infrastructure
stimulus spending, and he has taxed the bejesus out of the rich. And the
result wasn't more equality and a resurgent middle class, but an angry
and worried worker class that hasn't seen a pay raise in 15 years and
with household incomes in the last seven years that have fallen behind
inflation. Some 95 million Americans aren't working and the poverty rate
is still hellishly high."

Clinton "is selling
the American voters sand in the desert: four more years of stay the
course economic bromides at a time when two out of three voters say that
the U.S. is on the wrong, not the right track."

Trump fired back at Hillary yesterday, hitting her hard enough that Clinton worshippers are getting anxious.

Slate's Michelle Goldberg lamented
that the tide may be turning against the Benghazi bungler Trump paints
as a corrupt, money-grubbing, political hack. Crestfallen, the diehard
leftist called Trump's Wednesday speech on Clinton's record dishonest
and demagogic but "terrifyingly effective" and "probably the most
unnervingly effective" speech the man has ever given.

"In a
momentary display of discipline, he read from a teleprompter with
virtually no ad-libbing, avoiding digs at Bill Clinton’s infidelity or
conspiracy theories about Vince Foster’s suicide," speaking "for 40
minutes without saying anything overtly sexist." Instead, he took aim at
"Clinton’s most-serious weaknesses, describing her as a venal tool of
the establishment."

Goldberg treated Trump's
address as brilliant performance art in which he "interwove truth and
falsehood into a plausible-seeming picture meant to reinforce listeners'
underlying beliefs."

Pretending her readers were complete
idiots ignorant of Hillary's history, Goldberg wheeled out Washington
establishment yes man David Gergen to denounce what he called Trump's
"slanderous speech." On CNN an animated Gergen made a fool of himself by
castigating Trump for relying on the exhaustively documented allegations of graft and corruption in Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by acclaimed best-selling author Peter Schweizer.

Regurgitating the self-serving nonsense peddled by leftist slander
shop Media Matters for America, the "conservative misinformation"
monitor that Hillary herself takes credit for founding, Gergen said that
the "book has been basically discredited."

Saying that Israel was “maybe the only country in which another people
is under occupation and in which these people have no rights,” Huldai
continued:

We can’t keep these
people in a reality in which they are occupied and expect them to reach
the conclusion that everything is all right and that they can continue
living this way…. I know the reality and understand that leaders with
courage need to aspire to reach [an agreement] and not just talk about
it.

Considering that Huldai is a public official, mayor of a
major city, it is putting it mildly to say that his words were full of
ignorance and distortions. Israel is not an occupier in the West Bank. There are, however, numerous occupied peoples
in the world. Palestinians in the West Bank have the prerogative to
elect their own government and many other rights. The large majority of
Palestinians—and certainly the terrorists among them—reject any Israeli claim to any land.
So many attempts—by Israeli, American, and other leaders—to reach an
agreement with the Palestinians have been turned down cold that any
realistic Israeli leader understands that, at least for the time being,
it’s an impossible goal.

But beyond those points, there’s
another: shooting up people in a café is a crime, known as murder. No
claim of political grievance is exoneration for murder. That point is
widely understood in civilized societies—though not by the mayor of Tel
Aviv.

Huldai’s words, which sparked fury, would be less
significant if they were an aberration. Unfortunately, statements of
that ilk are typical of the Israeli left—including, amazing as it may
seem, in the case of left-wing politicians seeking to gain public
favor.

Ehud Barak, a lifelong Laborite, is a former prime
minister and defense minister. Before leaving politics in 2013, he was
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense minister for four years. He
was seen as Netanyahu’s close ally and fellow hawk on the Iranian issue,
and worked hard—even dividing his party at one point—to keep
Netanyahu’s coalition in power.

In a speech on June 16,
Barak—who, as Netanyahu’s defense minister, had warned steadily that
time was running out to stop Iran’s nuclear program—said that Israel
faced “no existential threats.” He went on to accuse Netanyahu of
“Hitlerizing” all threats to Israel, saying:

Hitlerization by the prime minister cheapens the Holocaust…. Our situation is grave even without [comparisons to] Hitler….

Barak, however, went on to give his own characterization of the current situation in Israel:

Only a blind person or a sheep, an ignoramus or someone jaded, can’t
see the erosion of democracy and the “budding fascism.…” If it looks
like budding fascism, walks like budding fascism and quacks like budding
fascism, that’s the situation…. In capitals around the world—in London
and Washington, in Berlin and Paris, in Moscow and Beijing—no leader
believes a word coming out of Netanyahu’s mouth or his government’s.

If it sounds unhinged, vicious, and appropriate for the BDS (boycott,
divestment, and sanctions) movement, that indeed is what it was. And
while Barak, 74, disavowed any further political ambitions, he also
said:

I call on the government to come to its
senses, to get back on track immediately…. If it does not do that, it
will be incumbent upon all of us—yes, all of us—to get up from our
seats…and bring it down via popular protest and via the ballot box
before it’s too late.

A week later, there is no sign that “all
of us” are doing anything of the sort. Barak’s words have been
dismissed by some as an attempt by a sidelined, no longer relevant
politician to get back in the limelight.

But Isaac Herzog,
opposition leader and Barak’s current replacement as Labor Party leader,
is an active Israeli politician who still has—or claims to
have—political ambitions. Strangely, then, Herzog’s rhetorical style is
no more pleasing to the great majority of Israeli ears than Mayor
Huldai’s or former minister Barak’s.

In October 2015, Herzog attacked
Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, telling Netanyahu to
“go home” and take Bennett with him, since their “policies have failed,
and are leading us to another Masada”—referring to the mountain fortress
where in 73 CE a Jewish group committed mass suicide rather than be
taken captive by the Romans.

Herzog added:

Netanyahu claims to be “managing” the conflict, along with Bennett.
The way you are handling the conflict has turned into a knife to stab us
in the back, a knife in the back of Israelis.

Now it turns out that, before the March 2015 elections, Herzog offered Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas a deal
in which Israel would have ceded virtually the entire West Bank, agreed
to divide Jerusalem, and kept only a “symbolic” military presence in
the strategically crucial Jordan Valley.

Herzog, true to form, had a ready justification:

After rounds of wars and funerals nearly every year and over the past
decade, I won’t listen to the mantra that threats can only be subdued
through military force…. The right always offers us war and then runs to
sign peace treaties. We are just offering to reverse the order and
prevent hundreds of fathers and mothers from visiting military
cemeteries. The right should also consider this.

Herzog said that in a report from June 19. Two days later it was reported
that the Israeli left—which lost in a landslide in 2015—had fared even
worse in a new poll, “crashing” and “imploding.” Herzog’s Labor Party
had plummeted from 24 seats in the current Knesset to 9, with the whole
bloc getting 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or at most 34 if one
counts the Yesh Atid party—which many consider centrist—as left-wing.

The Israeli left has, of course, other problems besides its rhetorical
style. Most of its members no longer claim to be socialist. Israelis
rightly view its “peace” ideology as shrill and outmoded. Opposite the
repeatedly elected Netanyahu—who runs Israel skillfully as a pragmatic
centrist—the left, and particularly Labor, appears to have no clear
purpose or coherent critique to offer.

And yet, with all that,
the Israeli left seems unable to absorb the fact that blaming Israelis
for terror attacks, accusing them of “budding fascism,” painting their
leaders as back-stabbers and engines of war, and trying to scare them
with talk of “military cemeteries” is also no way to make a positive
impression on them. One can wait years for the left to stop striking out
blindly and viciously and instead try some introspection. It doesn’t
happen.

P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Beersheva and author of the book Choosing Life in Israel. His memoir, Destination Israel: Coming of Age and Finding Peace in the Middle East, is forthcoming from Liberty Island later this year.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263258/israeli-left-implodes-still-doesnt-understand-why-p-david-hornik Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

America is apparently bent on repeating -- yet again -- the
historic wrong turn it took in 1979 by once again embracing the radical
Islamic regime in Iran. Why would the U.S. administration think doing
the same thing again will have a different outcome?

"You will see we are not in
any particular animosity with the Americans," Ayatollah Khomeini said,
and promised to President Jimmy Carter that Iran would be a "tolerant
democracy."

Although the State Department has in its just released annual
report on world-wide terror designated Iran as the world's premier state
sponsor of terrorism, the Obama administration has assisted Iranian
militias in Iraq with air support, provided intelligence to Hezbollah's
allies on Israeli air strikes, and has steadfastly refused to use any
military force against any elements of the Assad regime.

Senior leaders from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are in Washington,
meeting with top U.S. diplomatic and defense officials, and are deeply
concerned America has significantly worsened the situation in the Middle
East by creating a "strategic partnership" with Iran.

Thirty-seven years ago, U.S. President Jimmy Carter paved the way for
Iran's Islamic theocratic dictatorship to come to power, according to newly declassified secret documents,
reports the BBC Persian News Service. The documents show that Carter
pledged to "hold back" the Iranian military from attempting a coup,
which would have prevented the return of the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini from France.

The documents also reveal that the Carter administration believed --
erroneously -- that bringing Ayatollah Khomeini into power in Iran, and
in the process abandoning the Shah, would preserve American interests,
keep the Soviets out of the region, protect U.S. allies, and ensure the
flow of oil to the world's industrial nations.

In one of his many messages
to President Carter, Khomeini played into that belief. "You will see we
are not in any particular animosity with the Americans," Khomeini said,
and promised that Iran would be a "tolerant democracy."

Unfortunately, the mullahs did not stop their terrorist ways; and the
U.S. government, through successive administrations, did not stop them,
either.

The Reagan administration, for example, deployed "peacekeepers" to
Lebanon under Congressionally-mandated rules of engagement that,
tragically, only facilitated the Iranian- and Syrian-directed bombings
of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut.

Then, the Clinton administration refused to lift an arms embargo and
provide weapons to Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, ensuring that
Iranian weapons and influence would fill the void.

The result of decades of the U.S. policy in Iran is that since
Islamic terrorists took power in Tehran in 1979, Iran has murdered
thousands of Americans[1]
-- in addition to those killed in the bombings in Lebanon, the Khobar
Towers in Saudi Arabia, the African embassies, and the World Trade
Center in New York.

U.S. court decisions
have so far held Iran responsible for more than $50 billion in damages
owed to American citizens for these terror attacks, which directed by
the mullahs and their terrorist proxies.

America's military has also suffered. Thousands of American and
allied soldiers have been killed and maimed by Iranian Improvised
Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan.[2]

It could be argued that the United States has at times had to make
deals with unsavory countries. It was allied with the Soviet Union, for
instance, in the fight to destroy Nazism in World War II. So, the
thinking might go, a genuine agreement to eliminate Iran's nuclear
weapons program might require some compromise and thus a type of
"partnership".

U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during talks in Vienna, Austria, July 14,
2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

The Obama administration has, in fact, sought to justify its embrace
of Iran by citing the assumed benefits from a nuclear agreement with
Iran.[3] But the current "nuclear deal" with Iran is not a real agreement. The Iranians never signed it.

Members of Iran's parliament reviewed it and made it clear that they
would only adhere to those parts of the agreement they liked, insisting
in a public statement, released after the review, that the U.S. had no
reciprocal flexibility.

While the Obama administration tried to portray the agreement as one
which would "dismantle" much of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, the
facts were that Iran was able to keep an "industrial sized nuclear program". Elliot Abrams describes
the Iranian strategy on its nuclear program as trading "permanent
American concessions for Iranian gestures of temporary restraint".

Even worse, under the "deal" Iran would ultimately be able to become a
full-fledged, legitimate nuclear power in roughly ten years.
Additionally, despite promises and signed UN resolutions to the
contrary, Iran's ballistic missile program continues, giving Tehran the largest missile inventory in the Middle East.

Thus, the current US "tilt" toward Iran has not been a carefully
calibrated outreach to a dangerous adversary. It has been instead a firm
embrace of a dictatorship
that has not only killed thousands of Americans, but continues to
undermine U.S. and allied interests in the Gulf and elsewhere.

Moreover, although the State Department has in its just released
annual report on world-wide terror designated Iran as the world's
premier state sponsor of terrorism, the Obama administration has assisted
Iranian militias in Iraq with air support, provided intelligence to
Hezbollah's allies on Israeli air strikes, and has steadfastly refused
to use military force against any elements of the Assad regime. In 2014,
President Obama wrote to Supreme Leader Khamenei that any US military
action in Syria would "target neither the Syrian dictator nor his
forces".

Destroying ISIS or stopping terrorism against America and its allies
cannot be achieved by embracing Shia terrorists directed by Tehran.

The Sunni nations of the Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean
might be willing to provide leadership and manpower in a coalition to
oppose Iran's doctrine of Shia conquest.
However, although the U.S. administration has repeatedly talked about
such a coalition, America's actions have continually embraced and helped
Iran. As Michael Doran has explained,
the result of the American administration's embrace of Iran "has been
the development of an extremist safe haven that... stretches from the
outskirts of Baghdad all the way to Damascus."

The U.S. could enter into talks with the Saudis, Egyptians, other
Arab states and other countries in the region to help them build a
coalition to oppose Iran's plans to achieve hegemonic status in the
Middle East.

Is reform in the region even possible? Or is the U.S. now solidly
locked into an embrace with an increasingly hostile and violent Iran?

Reform in the Middle East does not come easily, but the "Arab Spring"
illustrates that positive change can take place. Unfortunately, the
Obama administration, as President Carter mistakenly did in 1979, has
embraced the mullahs, who immediately sidelined any reformers who might
have been democratically inclined. In Egypt, the U.S. then actively
helped bring the extremist Muslim Brotherhood to power, until twenty-two
million Egyptians themselves apparently decided they had tasted enough
of such repression and revolted; and in Afghanistan, the U.S.
pathetically kept looking for the "moderate wing" of the Taliban.[4]

America is apparently bent on repeating -- yet again -- the historic
wrong turn it took in 1979, by once again embracing the radical Islamic
regime in Iran. Why would the U.S. administration think doing the same
thing again will have a different outcome?

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic
Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, and was the
senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation
for more than 20 years. He is now the National Security Fellow at the
AFPC, and Senior Defense Consultant at the Air Force Association.

[1] For the details about Iran's involvement in 9-11 see http://www.iran911case.com.
For Iran complicity in conducting other terror attacks against the
United States in Beirut, Khobar Towers, and the African embassies, see
Clare Lopez speaking at the Center for Security Policy.
Also in documents recently translated from the "Abbottobad" material
seized in the raid on Osama Bin Laden's Pakistani hideout, Joseph Braude
host of the New York radio show "Risalat," reveals that according to
Bin Laden, "Our main artery for funds, personnel and communication" is
Iran.[2]
Testimony of Lt General Michael Flynn, (Retired), former Director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency, 10 June 2015, the Joint Foreign Affairs
and HASC Subcommittee, House of Representatives.[3] See for example, these assessments of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA): "Our Iranian Allies", "The Iran Deal Wasn't About Nukes At All", and "The Iran Deal, One Year In: Economic, Nuclear, and Regional Implications."[4] This aspect of the "Arab Spring" and the Administration's response is detailed by Walid Phares in The Lost Spring, 2014, Palgrave Macmillan.

Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic
Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, and was the
senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation
for more than 20 years. He is now the National Security Fellow at the
AFPC, and Senior Defense Consultant at the Air Force Association.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8319/us-embracing-iran Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The
American defense establishment wants, needs and appreciates Israeli
missile defense capabilities and innovation. Money spent in cooperation
with Israel on missile defense greatly expands the reach of American
R&D dollars.

Congress has passed a $576 billion Defense Appropriations bill for 2016 with a wide and bipartisan majority: 282-138, according to Defense News.
The Obama administration takes issue with various parts of the bill,
including presenting a six-page memo specifically calling for the
elimination of Congress’s allocation of $635 million for Israel.

The
money for Israel includes $268.7 million in R&D for U.S.-Israel
cooperative missile defense programs; $72 million for the procurement of
Iron Dome; $150 million for the procurement of David’s Sling; $120
million for procurement of Arrow III; and $42.7 million for U.S.-Israel
anti-tunnel cooperation.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the administration opposed the funding increase for
Israel because it “would consume a growing share of a shrinking U.S.
Missile Defense Agency’s budget… Additional support for Israel means
fewer resources that are available for critical U.S. programs at a time
when the missile threat from North Korea, in particular, is increasing.”

Here’s a thought for Adm. Kirby and the administration: Man up.

Fund
U.S. missile defense programs – and the rest of the U.S. defense budget
-- at levels appropriate to the threat America faces without
shortchanging an ally facing broad, increasing and unremitting threats.

How did we get here?

Thirty
years ago, Israel was invited to join President Reagan’s missile
defense program by LTG James Abrahamson, the first director of the
Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO). It was a serious
philosophical leap for the IDF, which had until that time understood the
only response to rockets and missiles to be offensive -- hence
escalatory. If Hizb’allah fired one at Israel; Israel fired two in
return until the “international community” sought a ceasefire. Uzi
Rubin, former director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization
(IMDO), explained in inFOCUS Quarterly:

The
IDF high command was generally skeptical about the strategic value of
active defense, and doubted Israel’s defense industries’ ability to
master the required technologies. This skepticism was mirrored by the
media and elaborated on by civilian military analysts. Only shock and
dismay from missiles and rockets hitting Israel’s undefended population
centers in 1991 (the Gulf War) and 2006 (the Second Lebanon War),
coupled with Iron Dome’s successful defense on the Gaza front brought a
change of heart…

U.S.-Israel
collaboration – through the Arrow I and II and upcoming Arrow III
programs and the Green Pine radar, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome -- took
Israel’s response to the burgeoning missile threats from Hizb'allah,
Hamas, and Iran off the “hair trigger.” The Israeli government didn’t
have to escalate at the first rocket, but could calculate its response
and tell its public, “We can defend you, we are defending you, and we
will continue to do so.” [In 2014, Iron Dome had a 90% success rate
-- 4,594 rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli targets, 735 were
determined to threaten populated areas and all but 70 of those were
intercepted.]

It was and remains a brilliant collaboration, from which the U.S. has benefitted. Even in 2013, at a moment of U.S.-Israel political tension, Vice President Biden used the AIPAC Policy Conference to promote U.S.-Israel security cooperation,
emphasizing American support for Israel’s missile defense program as
coin of the realm. Four points have been repeatedly emphasized by
American administrations -- Democrat and Republican:

Israel
makes excellent use of the money and accounts for it in a
well-established manner -- unlike, say, much larger appropriations for
Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The
American defense establishment wants, needs and appreciates Israeli
missile defense capabilities and innovation. Money spent in cooperation
with Israel on missile defense greatly expands the reach of American
R&D dollars.

By law, nearly 75 percent of the money must be spent in the U.S.
So the U.S. not only reaps the benefits of cutting edge Israeli
R&D, but U.S. defense contractors benefit from their association
with Israeli companies as well.

Congress
has mandated that Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) -- its
military advantage over conventionally armed adversaries – must be
maintained, including through financing of necessary weapons.

Adm.
Kirby’s complaint about the expense is part of a familiar dance during
the Obama years. Beginning in 2009, the Obama administration
shortchanged money for Israel’s missile defense programs. Congress would
complain and put the money in, and the president would sign the bill
with Israel’s money in it. Defense Newsnoted in 2012:

The
Obama administration’s recently released budget request details a cut
in funding to the “Israeli Cooperative,” as the jointly developed Arrow
and David’s Sling programs are known, from $106.1 million in fiscal 2012
to $99.9 million in fiscal 2013. And since Congress more than doubled
the administration’s request last year to $235.7 million, President
Obama’s budget would more than halve the cooperative’s funding.
Moreover, this marks the third consecutive year (emphasis added) that the administration has requested less funding and it will not be the last, according to its own budget projections.

And, indeed, the 2013 request (for 2014 spending) was $96 million, to which Congress added $174 million. The 2014 request (for 2015 spending) added $96.8 million for the “Israeli Cooperative.” At that point, The Jewish Policy Center
noted, “Although the bipartisan effort in Congress keeps the money at a
relatively even level, this is a terrible way for the Obama
Administration to do business.”

Which is a second thought for the administration: missile defenses are, as the name implies, defensive measures.
Absent an enemy with offensive plans and capabilities, the threat
recedes. So if you get Hizb’allah, Hamas, and Iran -- for starters -- to
forego their offensive missile programs and offer a peace with
Israel that ensures that the Jewish State will be a legitimate,
permanent part of the region, Israel’s missile defense appropriation
would not need to be nearly as high. Make North Korea forego its missile
program, Adm. Kirby, and you won’t have to worry about fewer resources
being available for American programs either.

Short
of that unlikely scenario, Israel -- and the U.S. -- will need
cooperative missile defense programs for the foreseeable future. And
Israel, it appears, will need Congress to ensure that the money is
there.

Shoshana BryenSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/funding_israels_missile_defense__and_americas.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Hansjörg
Wyss is accelerating a $100 million registration and get-out-the-vote
plan in order to more quickly impact elections and the U.S. policy
landscape

The Democratic Party is collaborating with a foreign billionaire who has repeatedly violated our laws by illegally contributing to elections here, in a project to achieve its progressive agenda by “altering the electorate,” according to an authentic-looking document leaked by a hacker of the DNC computers who uses the name Guccifer 2.0. Can you say, “Sinister global cabal”?

Lachlan Markay of the Free Beacon highlights this revelation from the DNC Hack:

A
Swiss billionaire and seven-figure Clinton Foundation donor is pouring
millions of dollars into a nonprofit voter registration and turnout
operation and appears to have shared information about the project with
the Democratic Party, a leaked document reveals.Hansjörg
Wyss is accelerating a $100 million registration and get-out-the-vote
plan in order to more quickly impact elections and the U.S. policy
landscape, according to a document detailing the proposed work by his
charitable group, the Wyss Foundation.

On
the surface, voter registration drives are supposedly nonpartisan and a
public service, hence qualifying for charitable tax-deductible (i.e.,
taxpayer-subsidized) status. But in practice, mobilizing those who are
apathetic enough to require external stimulus to register and vote
usually means helping Democrats, who depend on poorly-informed people
voting on the basis of emotion and casual impressions based on the
simplistic propaganda coming their way. And, in fact, the leaked
memorandum entitled “Wyss Foundation Democracy Strategy Discussion
Memo,” acknowledges as much.

Unmarried
women, youth, and people of color – low-income populations who tend to
be reliably progressive on economic and women’s inequality issues—do not
participate equally in the democratic process. They are not registered,
don’t turnout, and drop-off in non-presidential years. Since elected
officials respond more to their voting constituents, policies are more
conservative than the preferences of the young, unmarried, of-color
majority. If low-income people voted at the same rate as high-income
people, it would be easier to achieve the Foundation’s policy goals and
it would ensure that the victories lasted beyond the foundation.

The
memo acknowledges the partisan (this memo was shared with the Democrats
only) political motivation for its “charitable” activity:

1.
In the short-term, highly-targeted (but relatively expensive)
strategies could be used to increased registration – and ultimately
participation – by the emerging progressive majority, closing the voting
gap faster and substantially advancing the Foundation’s policy agenda
by:

Creating a surge of registration in tipping-point geographies to accelerate change;

Engaging
the new majority in the political system around the Foundation’s
issue-agenda, through political engagement in a limited set of states
important to our issue work and through targeted communications work to
reach key demographics about the importance of voting.

The
memo foresees eventually relying on government funding to gin-up
participation by casually-engaged or unengaged potential voters after a
tipping point is reached through its relatively expensive privately
funded efforts.

We believe these efforts will alter the electorate….

But
this will take time and money, so the memo outlines where its funds can
best be applied, and seeks other private funds, in conjunction with the
DNC’s efforts. “Given the high cost, this would have to be done in
partnership with other funders.”

A
hundred million bucks! But when you think about it, pretty cheap to
gain control of the political system of the United States of America.

Markay reports:

The
Wyss Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation, meaning it cannot
finance explicitly political projects. But the group sees opportunities
to shift the electorate in ways that advance its policy agenda under a
nonpartisan banner.The
foundation did not respond to questions about its funding plan and why
its strategy memo ended up in the hands of the Democratic National
Committee. It was one of a number of internal documents released by a
hacker who claims to have breached the DNC computer network.Wyss,
a Swiss citizen, has donated to numerous federal and state political
campaigns despite legal bans on political contributions by foreign
nationals. While the law provides exceptions for lawful permanent
residents, Wyss revealed in 2014 that he does not have a U.S. green
card.In
addition to political campaigns, Wyss has generously supported the
Clinton Foundation. The foundation’s website states the Wyss Charitable
Endowment has given it between $1 million and $5 million.Wyss’
now-defunct HJW Foundation previously employed Clinton campaign
chairman John Podesta, who received $87,083 from the group in 2013 for
consulting services.Podesta
is the founder and former chairman of the Clinton-friendly Center for
American Progress. Wyss is a CAP board member and has donated more than
$1 million to the group since 2011.The
Wyss Foundation is also a member of the Democracy Alliance, a leading
left-wing donor club that is financing efforts similar to the
foundation’s work on registration and turnout operations.

Other
members of the Democracy Alliance include George Soros, Peter Lewis,
and Herb and Marion Sandler, whose World Savings issued lots of
mortgages that defaulted in the 2008 meltdown, but because it was sold
to Wachovia Bank (which subsequently failed owing to the vast
liabilities it had acquired from the Sandlers) with remarkably good
timing, the Sandlers emerged with billions of dollars of wealth.

All
of these billionaires are committed to this same sort of fundamental
transformation, mobilizing and manipulating casual and uninformed voters
to support their agenda.

And now we know they are part of an international plot.

Don’t
expect the mainstream media to get too interested in this, though,
because it might interfere with the Democrats’ agenda to gain control
and work for the little people, just as Hillary has done with her Wall
Street pals.Thomas LifsonSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/guccifer_20_hack_reveals_dnc_collaboration_with_foreign_billionaire_to_alter_the_electorate.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

But the big story is the law enforcement and media cover-up.

The first hint that something was amiss with this story came in the initial media report
about it: Idaho’s “KMVT has confirmed that a reported sexual assault
that possibly occurred near the Fawnbrook Apartments is being
investigated by the Twin Falls Police Department. The incident allegedly
occurred on June 2.” Why the five-day gap between incident and news
report? Unexplained. Even more curiously, the story added: “Several
unconfirmed reports concerning the case are circulating on social
media.” Why would social media be filled with unconfirmed reports about
this particular sexual assault? Unexplained.

The explanation
for both of these curious aspects of the story came from Twin Falls
residents, who began a petition asking that authorities act against the
perpetrators, explaining:

The little girl was at the FAWNBROOK apartment buildings where both
her parents and grandmother reside. She was playing in between those two
apartment units when 3 boys (from 2 Syrian refugee families, ages 8,
10, 13) pulled a knife on her, held it to her throat, forced her into
the laundry unit, stripped her naked, raped, and urinated on her. The 13
year old “coached” the younger boys as he videoed. Due to age restraint
the boys could not ejaculate but did urinate on her.

But at a local city council meeting, instead of being outraged by this
incident and determined to bring the guilty to justice, council members
were openly contemptuous and hostile toward citizens who were expressing their concerns about it. Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs was dismissive:
“There was no gang rape, there was no Syrian involvement, there were no
Syrian refugees involved, there was no knife used, there was no
inactivity by the police. I’m looking at the Drudge Report headline:
‘Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho’ – all false.”

The only problem with this was that Loebs’ string of denials left the
essentials of the story intact. The perps were not Syrian, but they were
Muslim migrants. There was no rape, but there was sexual assault. The Twin Falls residents’ petition was revised:

This little girl, as stated in the news, was assaulted, and urinated
on by three boys under the age of 18. The boys took her into a laundry
room and proceeded to take part on the previous stated actions which was
videotaped by the eldest boy. The incident as well as the video was
submitted to the police department. However, due to the ages of the
children involved, this case is being sealed. Many people in this
community are in awe, and outraged that minimal consequences will be
served to these boys and their parents for this vile incident.

This happened three weeks ago around 3:30. I was sitting on my porch
patio and I looked over and saw this boy taking pictures with a camera.
He was from Africa or somewhere overseas, standing outside the laundry
room taking pictures of kids in the laundry room. I found them in there.
I knew there was something going on because the boy (with the phone
camera) was acting funny, he was taking pictures but he was telling the
two younger boys what to do….The door was cracked enough for him to see
the pictures he was taking. I opened that door and I almost fainted when
I saw what was going on and here I’m a nurse. What a pitiful thing for a
poor little girl to go through. The worst thing was the way
they peed all over her clothes and on her too, and I thought that was
one of the meanest things I’ve ever saw done....The little girl had no
clothes on. The boys took them off. The littlest boy said "we didn’t do
it, he told us to," pointing to the older boy. They’re just kids that
have a mother and they moved here from overseas. The women don’t even
talk any English, some of them do, but others don’t. They wear long
dresses and long black things on their heads.

Since this horrifying story involved Muslim migrants, the mainstream
media went into full cover-up mode, focusing on Loebs’ denials to
portray the whole thing as right-wing anti-immigrant hysteria. As Daniel Greenfield has noted, that, not the sexual assault, became the story:

We have seen in recent days, with the White House’s inept attempts to
conceal Orlando jihad mass murderer Omar Mateen’s Islamic declarations,
that covering for Islam seems to be what the Obama administration
considers its primary responsibility. The mainstream media, always in
Obama’s pocket, is following along: Muslim migrants brutalizing a little
girl in Idaho? That’s not a story. Angry Idaho residents protesting
against law enforcement inaction about the assault? That’s not a story,
either. Idaho residents getting some details of the story wrong? That’s a
story – see, folks? This isn’t about the risks and dangers of importing
huge numbers of Muslim migrants. It’s about the racism and xenophobia
of ordinary Americans. As are all mainstream media stories having
anything to do with Islam in the U.S.

Robert SpencerSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263268/muslim-migrant-sex-assault-comes-idaho-robert-spencer Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

"Some of the sources and methods used to develop some of the intelligence exposed by Mr. Pollard not only remain classified but are still in use by the intelligence community today," senior American intelligence official tells U.S. Parole Commission.

Jonathan Pollard walks
outside the federal courthouse in New York City, November 2015

|

Photo credit: AP

The American intelligence community supports
the continuation of strict parole conditions for Jonathan Pollard, the
Israeli spy who was freed last November after serving three decades in
U.S. federal prison, The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday.

In declarations filed with the U.S. Parole
Commission last Friday, a number of senior U.S. intelligence officials
said Pollard still poses a national security risk if left unmonitored.

"Some of the sources and methods used to
develop some of the intelligence exposed by Mr. Pollard not only remain
classified but are still in use by the intelligence community today,"
Jennifer L. Hudson, a senior official in the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, said in a written statement.

Pollard's lawyers have appealed against his parole
conditions, which include GPS tracking of Pollard's movements with an
electronic ankle bracelet and monitoring of his personal computer and
online activities.

Yoni Hersch and Israel Hayom StaffSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=34535 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Anti-Defamation League says that 941 reported anti-Semitic incidents in 2015 included 56 assaults in addition to harassment, vandalism • Colleges are hotbeds for harassment of Jews, with university campuses comprising 10% of anti-Semitic incidents.

An "eviction" notice
distributed to Jewish university students by pro-BDS activists

Anti-Semitic assaults rose dramatically in the
United States last year to 56, and the overall number of hateful
incidents targeting Jews increased by 3%, the Anti-Defamation League
said in a report on Wednesday.

Colleges in particular have become a place
where Jews are particularly exposed to harassment, with anti-Semitic
incidents at university campuses accounting for 10% of occurrences
nationwide, the league said.

"We are disturbed that violent anti-Semitic
incidents are rising," Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the
Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

The 56 anti-Semitic assaults nationwide in
2015 represented an increase of more than 50% from the year before,
according to the ADL.

The group said it was not clear what may have led to the spike.

Overall, the ADL report said, the United
States had 941 anti-Semitic incidents in 2015, which aside from assaults
included harassment, threats and vandalism.

The figures, which the group said may not
include incidents that were not reported by victims, are based on
reports collected by the ADL at its regional offices and data from law
enforcement agencies.

Anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses has
concerned many in the Jewish community, and it has occurred as on-campus
activists have led heated anti-Israel protests and calls to boycott and
divest from the Jewish state.

The University of California's regents
declared in March that they would not tolerate anti-Semitism on campus
but rejected a proposal to equate anti-Zionism with religious bigotry,
as they tried to defuse tensions between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian
students.

Attacks on Jews have long accounted for a significant share of hate crimes in the United States.

The FBI, in its latest hate crime statistics released in
November, said that in 2014 more than 56% of the anti-religious hate
crimes in the United States that year were motivated by anti-Jewish
bias.

Reuters and Israel Hayom StaffSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=34529 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.